US Supreme Court rejects bid to restrict access to abortion pill mifepristone
Americans will still be able to buy an abortion pill after the US Supreme Court threw out a bid by campaign groups to restrict access to it.
The decision was made by the same court that two years ago overturned Roe v Wade – which had previously given women rights to terminate a pregnancy.
The drug – mifepristone – was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September 2000 for medical termination up to seven weeks into pregnancy, extended to 10 weeks in 2016.
It was ruled the plaintiffs behind the lawsuit challenging mifepristone lacked the necessary legal standing to pursue the case, which required they show they have been harmed in a way that can be traced to the FDA.
The plaintiffs wanted an end to rules introduced in 2016 and 2021 that permitted medication abortions at up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven, and for mail delivery of the drug without a woman first seeing a doctor in-person.
The suit initially had sought to reverse FDA approval of mifepristone, but that aspect was thrown out by a lower court.
Mifepristone is taken with another drug called misoprostol to perform medication abortions – now the most common method of terminating pregnancies in the US.
Read more: Why were there calls to ban abortion drug?
Anti-abortion activists outside the Supreme Court in April 2023. Pic: Reuters
The FDA said that after decades of use by millions of women in the US and around the world, mifepristone has proven “extremely safe” and that studies have demonstrated that “serious adverse events are exceedingly rare”.
The plaintiffs, known as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, argued the FDA acted contrary to its mandate to ensure medications are safe when it eased the restrictions on mifepristone.
They also accused the administration of violating a federal law governing the actions of regulatory agencies.
US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk broadly sided with them in a 2023 decision that would have effectively pulled the pill off the market.
Read more on Sky News:
What’s changed since Roe v Wade decision was overturned?
However, after the FDA appealed, the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals did not go as far as Kacsmaryk but still ruled against its move to widen access to the pill.
This decision was placed on hold pending the Supreme Court’s review.
The plaintiffs said they had legal standing to sue because their member doctors would be forced to violate their consciences due to “often be called upon to treat abortion-drug complications” in emergency settings.
The Justice Department said these claims relied on an impermissibly speculative chain of events.
Following the decision, Joe Biden said in a statement: “Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues.
“It does not change the fact that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom.
“It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Trump – speaking at a campaign event – acknowledged the issue had cost Republicans and that it is too important to ignore.
The presidential hopeful said it was his preference for the decision to be made by the people and individual states.
The mifepristone dispute is not the only abortion case the Supreme Court is due to decide during this presidential election year.
It also is expected to rule by the end of June on the legality of Idaho’s strict Republican-backed abortion ban that forbids terminating a pregnancy even if necessary to protect the health of a pregnant woman facing a medical emergency.
Donald Sutherland, who appeared in films including The Hunger Games and Kelly’s Heroes, has died at the age of 88.
His agency, CAA, said he died in Miami “after a long illness”.
The Canadian actor won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his performance in the mini-series Citizen X.
In 2017, he received an honorary Oscar.
His son, fellow actor Kiefer Sutherland, said “with a heavy heart” that his father had “passed away”.
“I personally think [he was] one of the most important actors in the history of film,” Kiefer Sutherland posted on X, adding that he was “never daunted by a role – good, bad or ugly”.
“He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.”
Sutherland with his son Kiefer. Pic: Reuters
In the Hunger Games franchise, Donald Sutherland played President Snow alongside Jennifer Lawrence.
In Kelly’s Heroes he starred alongside Telly Savalas and Clint Eastwood as Sergeant Oddball – on a mission to steal gold from the Nazis.
“I love to work – I passionately love to work,” Sutherland told US talk show host Charlie Rose in 1998.
“I love to feel my hand fit into the glove of some other character. I feel a huge freedom – time stops for me. I’m not as crazy as I used to be, but I’m still a little crazy.”
Sutherland with Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence in 2015. Pic: AP
His “breakthrough performances” were in 1967 movie The Dirty Dozen and MASH, CAA said.
He also took parts in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People and Oliver Stone’s JFK.
He is survived by his wife Francine Racette, sons Roeg, Rossif, Angus, and Kiefer, daughter Rachel, and four grandchildren.
“A private celebration of his life will be held by the family,” CAA said.
Born in St John, New Brunswick, on the east coast of Canada in July 1935, he was the son of a salesman and a mathematics teacher.
He started university in Toronto as an engineering student but switched to English and started acting in college productions.
Rapper Travis Scott has been arrested for “disorderly intoxication and trespassing”, police in the US have said.
Scott, who has two children with Kylie Jenner, was arrested for causing a “disturbance” on a charter boat at the Miami Beach Marina, where he “was drunk, and asked to leave multiple times”, the Miami Beach Police Department said.
Officers were called to the marina at 12.44 am on Thursday morning to reports of a disturbance, according to official records.
The 10-time Grammy Award nominee was reportedly getting off a charter boat when the owner of the boat asked him to leave, 7News Miami said on its website.
The force said officers found Scott, arguably one of the biggest hip-hop acts in the world, “standing by the dock yelling at the vessel occupants”, and while he complied with their instructions to begin with, he then ignored them, NBC, Sky’s US partner, said.
Officers could sense “a strong smell of alcohol coming from the defendant’s breath”, records showed.
Though he agreed to leave the dock after being threatened with arrest, he did not go quietly.
As he walked to the boardwalk, Scott “walked backwards yelling obscenities to the occupants of the vessel”, police said.
He left the marina, but returned five minutes later and was seen by officers walking back toward the vessel.
Scott spoke to a sergeant he had spoken to earlier and began yelling once again – “becoming erratic” and “disturbing the peace of the occupants of the marina and nearby residential buildings causing a public disturbance”, court documents said.
The 33-year-old musician was arrested at 1.17am and booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center at 4.35 am on a charge of alleged disorderly intoxication as well as trespassing property after warning.
He submitted a $650 (£512) bond – $500 (£394) for the trespass charge and $150 (£118) for disorderly intoxication, the Daily Mail said.
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Scott, real name Jacques Bermon Webster II, has achieved four number-one hits on the US charts and is known for his energetic live shows and successful albums, including Astroworld.
He has two children with the socialite and media personality, Kylie Jenner, but the pair are no longer together.
His European tour, titled Circus Maximus, is due to start in The Netherlands next Friday and he is scheduled to play Manchester’s Co-Op Live venue on 13 July.
In 2021, 10 fans died in a crowd surge at his Astroworld festival in Houston, Texas, where he was born.
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He did not face criminal charges over their deaths but remains involved in civil cases alleging that organisers were at fault.
Last year he scored his first UK number one album with Utopia, which has been streamed more than 50 billion times globally, NME said.
The moment two cyclists were rear-ended by a drunk driver has been caught on camera by one of their colleagues.
Filmed on Monday, the video shows cyclists riding on the right-hand side of the road near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport when a white SUV rams them from behind.
Both riders are knocked to the ground – the SUV then veers to the left, before driving over one of the stricken cyclists.
Thomas Geppert, 69, was was taken to hospital with a severe laceration to his leg, the other victim, 65-year-old Deborah Eads was treated at the scene.
Pic: @AURORAMYST
Local news outlets reported other cyclists riding with the pair then pursued the driver – 31-year-old Benjamin Hylander – to a nearby Shell petrol station and forced him to return to the scene of the crash.
According to a police report, Hylander told investigators he had a beer an hour before the crash, but a breathalyser test showed his blood alcohol concentration was over the minimum threshold of 0.15.
It added that officers also found six empty cans of Voodoo Ranger beer while searching his vehicle.
Benjamin Hylander has been charged with two counts of intoxication assault with a vehicle Pic: DFW Airport Police
Hylander is now in custody and has been charged with two counts of intoxication assault with a vehicle, one count of accident involving injury, and one count of driving while intoxicated.
His employer is listed as American Airlines, who said on Wednesday that he would be withheld from service.
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Sky News has contacted DFW Airport Police and American Airlines for comment.
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